Lessons learned from starting a counseling ministry on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Dale Johnson and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified

Biblical Counselors, where we seek to provide biblical solutions

for the problems that people face. Today, I am delighted to have with us Ron Alchin. Ron is a familiar

face and name and voice around the biblical counseling movement. Ron has been an ACBC member for

quite a number of years, and he's also served on our

board with ACBC for a number of years as well. Ron is the founder of the Biblical Counseling

Center in Chicago. He's also had significant influence at another one of our training centers

in Charleston, South Carolina, low country biblical counseling center there.

Ron, I am delighted that you would be here with us to talk about this subject.

We have questions all the time about how to start a counseling ministry, or how should we

think as a church to start a ministry like this, or we want to get engaged in this ministry of counseling.

We see it as something God is calling us to from the scriptures.

And today I am excited.

You have a lot of experience in dealing with the beginnings of counseling ministries and the

sustaining of counseling ministries.

And so I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

And I want to start with this question.

If you can give us some context for why what you're going to say later is so important,

and let's just start with giving us sort of a brief history of the biblical counseling

movement and your engagement in that movement.

Well, when I was in seminary in Grand Rapids, I was introduced first of my senior year

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